Tag: theology

I really don’t understand American politics. Watching the current campaign for the Republican Party’s nomination for presidential candidacy only baffles me further. It’s stunning that so many of the Republican candidates appeal – and do so loudly and consistently – to the lowest common denominator among the population.

Topping my list of Republicans who bemuse me is Rick Santorum. His campaign only proves that you don’t have to be intelligent, open-minded, visionary, well-educated, focused or wise to run for president. He already proved earlier that any fool can become a senator. And now he’s proving that fool can also run for president and apparently get a lot of support.
The more obnoxious, narrow-minded, more critical and more hypocritical you are, it seems the more people will love you and cheer you on. Well, at least the people who share your myopic vision of the world. But there seems to be a lot of them in the Republican camp these days, at least according to the research.

Last week, Santorum turned his rabid attack away from his fellow candidates towards US President Barack Obama. Obama’s agenda, he told a meeting of the Tea Party (the uber-right-religious camp of the Republicans) is,

“…not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phoney ideal, some phoney theology — not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology…”

Despite this claim, Santorum was later unable to actually define what he meant by this outlandish and irrelevant claim, and made some confused statements about Obama “imposing his values on the church.” In a subsequent interview, Santorum clumsily backtracked, and tried to make his comments appear to be about Obama’s “world view,” stating, “I think that is a phony ideal. I don’t believe that is what we’re here to do. We’re not here to serve the Earth. The Earth is not the objective. Man is the objective.”

At that point, I would not have been surprised had he then criticized Obama for believing the earth orbited the sun, not the other way around. Santorum’s medieval attitude towards the environment shows that some ideas just never go away, no matter how bad or wrong they are.

To an outsider, even bringing religion into a political debate in a democracy is inexplicable. This is America, after all, not a Middle Eastern theocracy. It’s like criticizing someone because his shoe laces are a different colour. What relevance does faith have to someone’s ability to govern, to understand complex issues, to deal with social, cultural and military challenges? Faith is a private, not a public and certainly not a state matter. Dragging it into a political debate only underscores the paucity of Santorum’s platform. He obviously has scraped the bottom of his shallow barrel of ideas and now has to dip into the non-sequitor of religion.

It is equally baffling why anyone would even want to speak to the Tea Party. Everything I read and see about them further convinces me that they have slightly less understanding of political affairs than my cats do. There is more intelligence at conventions of village idiots than at the Tea Party marches I’ve seen online. Why would any political candidate want to appeal to people who are clearly fools (or as one illiterate Tea Party protester wrote on his sign, “morans” – more Tea Party signs here)?

There is a real chance Rick Santorum could become the republican candidate for the 2012 presidential election. And if he does, all those bright Tea Party supporters will be expecting him to act in their interest. American may not be a theocracy today, but if Santorum or his religious-right ilk get into power, it will be soon.

Recent Posts: The Municipal Machiavelli

Whilst perusing the Net for some material for my book on Machiavelli, some time back, I came across this maxim: “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.” It’s attributed on many, many sites to Machiavelli in his most famous work, The Prince. Sounds pretty Machiavellian, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t. … Continue reading “A Machiavellian Mis-quote”

6,055 total views, 15 views today

Share this:

Sometime in the next two weeks, I will be amalgamating servers for the several sites I manage and conflating them onto one, new and (I hope) faster and more efficient server. There may be some downtime while the files and databases migrate, like virtual birds, to their new home. I hope that the digital gods … Continue reading “Server upgrade coming”

16,952 total views, 56 views today

Share this:

A recent article in the Catholic Journal by William Borst suggests Machiavelli was “(m)ost likely an undeclared atheist…” but the author gives no reference from Machiavelli’s works for this statement. I would argue that, while he may have been critical of church politics at times, he carefully did not express any solid statements about faith that allow us … Continue reading “Atheist Machiavelli?”

22,204 total views, 52 views today

Share this:

Don MacDonald’s historically-accurate graphic novel about Machiavelli has finally been released and can be purchased though his website. He describes it as a ” …historically accurate graphic novel; hand drawn, hand painted and set in Renaissance Florence.” If you’ve followed the story on MacDonald’s blog, and seen the artwork, you’ll know his engaging style and … Continue reading “Machiavelli: The Graphic Novel”

23,797 total views, 77 views today

Share this:

Which works best in compelling behaviour of your subordinates: the carrot or the stick? Machiavelli wrote in Chapter 17 that a Prince who cannot be both loved and feared, is more effective if he chooses to be feared rather than loved. Use the stick, he tells us. And science has shown that this advice was … Continue reading “Reward or Punishment?”